design | digital | east asia by Ged Carroll

Jargon Watch: Nowism

Trendwatching.com came up with an interesting concept of nowism. Trendwatching describes it as:

“Consumers’ ingrained* lust for instant gratification is being satisfied by a host of novel, important (offline and online) real-time products, services and experiences. Consumers are also feverishly contributing to the real-time content avalanche that’s building as we speak. As a result, expect your brand and company to have no choice but to finally mirror and join the ‘now’, in all its splendid chaos, realness and excitement.”

Perversely this comes out of the age of abundance that we live in (even in the recession). This abundance has a flip side: possessions are no longer status symbols, but instead can be a gilded cage restricting consumers from experiences. We can see this is in the developed world: Japanese consumers are abandoning a lot of luxury consumption, which has hurt brands like Versace and Louis Vuitton. Both US and Japanese young people are also falling out of love with the traditional symbol of freedom: the motor car and automakers have struggled to adapt.

Just 40 years ago, the pony cars of the Ford Motor Company and others blew open the young US car market. Comparing the Mustang design to Toyota’s Scion and you can see this move away from status and freedom through motoring to utility.